God gave marriage to us. He wants us to experience His Love and joy, not go through a living hell as happens when we don’t understand marriage. We have the gift of marriage to learn important lessons about ourselves, our spouses, and marriage, and when we get it, the rewards are extraordinary. But when we don’t, marriage is like taking your Porche off-road.
Paul says the purpose of marriage is to learn to love unconditionally. But none of us ever heard that fantastic idea, so almost everyone approached their marriage like a ride at a theme park, not realizing they had to feed and nurture it. Nor were we taught how to cultivate love and marriage. So, although we found our Rolls Royce when we found our soulmate, we never changed the oil or even washed the windshield. That’s why we don’t know that happiness, love, and harmony are the right expectations from marriage. But these precious gifts are not automatically achieved. But don’t worry, IT IS NOT TOO LATE.
Our system is based on love for you, your spouse, and your family. There is simply no need to figure out who did what. We don’t need any therapeutic “unraveling.” Therapy never works, anyway. Paul created elegant processes that are sure and true.
Paul Friedman was a reputable and successful divorce mediator in San Diego. Then, in 2001, one of his couple clients asked him to save their marriage instead of ending it. It had already been declared “over” by a highly respected marriage counselor. Paul said “Yes, let’s do it. Marriage counselors are good people, but they rarely save marriages.
As a divorce mediator, Paul knew that using Western psychology to help a marriage is like trying to eat soup with a fork. Their training, methods, and tools, regardless of their degree or title, don’t address core marriage problems, which in simplest terms, stem from a near-universal misunderstanding of basic marriage principles. They mean well, but marital ignorance is why marriage unhappiness is the norm. Mental or psychological issues are not the cause of marriage difficulties and subsequent failures. Without a road map, marriage is quite difficult. We would not try mountain climbing without training, but that’s how we begin our marriages.
Character imperfections and poor judgment, which often lead to severe problems like infidelity, are not what break up marriages. The reason for marriage unhappiness, suffering, and failure is that most people learn about marriage only from watching sitcoms and movies, which are high on romance but low on realistic day-to-day married life reality. However, even if erroneous marital education was not the universal culprit, individual or couple’s marriage counseling is less than helpful when a marriage is in trouble because it is too much talk and not enough healing. Many good people and you probably know some, are realizing (the hard way) that traditional marriage counseling causes more harm than good. Conventional marriage counselors are simply not taught how to teach individuals or couples how to save their marriage and then achieve marital happiness.
Most of our clients are women whose husbands are in an emotional, active, or sexual affair, multiple affairs, repeat, or worse….. Because we never learned about ourselves or marriage, the most significant percentage of people who are married suffer. So, and this is what works, we ask you to consider what happened to you to be a call to action, a shout from the cosmos, to now heal your marriage. We know that what is common is to leave him or suck it up and continue, but honestly, the best option is to heal your marriage so the conditions that allowed for his betrayal are not there anymore. Here is what one (there are hundreds) woman reported back to us.
When someone uses traditional marriage counseling or other courses, they faithfully hope, “This will work; I just have to give it time.” Because marriage counseling isn’t direct or to the point of gaining specific results, one can only hope. Our courses, on the other hand, begin with knowledge and techniques, or you can call them tools, that prove themselves as you use them. Also, the way to success is outlined so you can see how you will progress and the milestones you will hit. There isn’t anything mysterious. You will know right away. Our successes are predictable and assured. There are clearly delineated milestones.
Although couples counseling is widely accepted, it doesn’t mean it works. When Paul started saving marriages in 2001, he began with a couple (who came to him for divorce mediation because that was his profession). That couple succeeded, so naturally, he then worked with couples. But he quickly realized how many pitfalls there were. Competition, blaming, efforts to negotiate, a reluctant “other spouse,” and even flirtation hindered progress or undermined progress entirely. He asked his psychologist friends about how to juggle all of that, and they all said the same thing: that it’s not possible, just do your best. Paul, however, wanted concrete results, progress toward happiness, and restoring love. He thought about the big picture with troubled marriages and realized that working with only one, even if the other was obstinate and unwilling, worked wonderfully. The adage, “It takes two to tango,” misleads us. One, going solo is absolutely the way to save a marriage. Now, almost 25 years later, our solo courses have proven to be incredibly effective. Sometimes, the other partner sees so much improvement that they ask (never push your spouse) what happened and want to get their course, which is sold as an add-on at a generous discount. But that is rare and irrelevant to marriage healing. Your spouse may not get his or her course, and it has never made a difference in the outcome, but it does matter if one is pushed. That is a bad thing.